Azerbaijan has named its Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, Mukhtar Babayev, who worked for more than two decades for the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, as president of the 29th United Nations climate conference. This will be held in Baku from November 11 to 22.
“His Excellency Mukhtar Babayev has been appointed president-designate of the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties,” Rashad Allahverdiyev, a ministry official, wrote to Agence France-Presse on Friday, January 5, in an email. This will be the second year that a COP on climate has been chaired by a man with a background in his country’s oil sector.
In 2023, the United Arab Emirates, hosts of COP28, chose Sultan Al-Jaber, the CEO of the Emirati state-owned oil company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to chair the UN conference, which took place concluded in Dubai on a call for a “transition” away from fossil fuels – the first time a COP has launched such a call.